


everybody moved on — i stayed there

by nockingarrows



Category: K-pop, Pentagon (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Not K-Pop Idols, Childhood Friends, Comfort/Angst, Estranged Friendship, Friendship, Gen, Platonic Relationships, Talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:47:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28688130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nockingarrows/pseuds/nockingarrows
Summary: He barely felt it—but that was a lie. The truth was that he did feel it, and a considerable part of him liked it because it was nice to at least feel something.[OR: Lee Hwitaek has an existential crisis and invites his childhood friend, who he's lost touch with for years, to have a coffee with him at the local café to talk about it]
Relationships: Jo Jinho | Jino/Lee Hwitaek | Hui
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16





	everybody moved on — i stayed there

**Author's Note:**

> title is from right where you left me by taylor swift, which speaks to this piece (and me) on a spiritual level. 
> 
> this piece comes from me having an existential crisis after meeting up with my college friends for the first time in a long while and transferring mine onto hui bc **that is what i do**
> 
> as always, i appreciate all kudos and comments!

The sun burned furiously through the window beside Lee Hwitaek’s chair, searing the side of his face like a brand. He barely felt it. One of his hands sat in his lap, and the other swirled a silver spoon around and around in his coffee. He noted that the steam had died down just enough that it no longer felt as warm as the sunlight against his cheek. 

He barely felt it—but that was a lie. The truth was that he did feel it, and a considerable part of him liked it because it was nice to at least feel  _ something _ . 

At least in this little café on the corner just beyond his apartment, the world was bright, yellow, and joy-tinted. In the office where he spent most of his days, the sun wasn’t something he saw at all. Instead, white walls boxed him in on all sides, and the only light that shined on his face came from his two desktop screens. Someone far more superstitious than he was had once told him that the blue light from computer screens could twist one’s brain until it was unrecognizable. Although, of course, he still didn’t believe  _ that _ , he wondered if there was some truth in it—that the blue light could turn you cold, quiet, flat like the papers on his desk and the clean, neat rows of code that he inputted every day of his endless, ever-puttering life. 

“Hwitaek?” 

He stopped sliding the spoon along the edge of his mug, and looked up. He realized then that his phone, which had been sitting on the table in front of him, had buzzed several times without him noticing. The screen was lit with the name of the man who stood before him—a man that Lee Hwitaek hadn’t seen in...oh, at least a decade, give or take. 

“Jinho hyung.”

Regret poked its irritating little head into the back of Hwitaek’s mind as he looked Jo Jinho up and down. He’d asked the man to come to this café to meet him on a whim, because after a thousand days of the same office and the same coworkers and the same bright letters on dark screens he’d wanted to talk to someone  _ alive _ . Someone who could remind him that he’d lived another life before this one. Someone who would look at him and not just see a man with a good salary and a nice apartment in a well-to-do city. 

Someone who knew to look past it all, at  _ him _ . 

But looking at Jo Jinho was a little bit too much of a reminder. He still wore that easy one-side-of-his-mouth smile that Hwitaek remembered so well, and was around the same stature—which was to say short, though only in comparison to everyone around him. He stood with confidence, feet steady and spread apart, the way Hwitaek had once tried so hard to emulate. Behind his sunglasses, which drifted farther and farther down his nose, his eyes were still brown, warm and kind. 

Besides that, though, this was not the boy of Hwitaek’s memory. He and Jinho had gone to elementary school together, and then high school, and then somehow miraculously also got into the same college. Though they studied different things—Hwitaek computer science, Jinho some sort of fancy music thing that had him carrying a guitar case everywhere—they met often. Junior and senior year they’d even been roommates, renting out a rickety little apartment in the college town whose sink worked only about 40% of the time. Nevertheless, it had been a happy place, and Hwitaek’s memories were filled with snapshots of them chatting until the wee hours of the morning in the dark, or sitting on that floor with its musty green carpet and drinking cheap wine from the corner shop. 

Never mind that Jinho had drunk most of the wine. Hwitaek had never been much of a drinker. He didn’t think—

“Gonna space out forever, huh?” Jinho asked in real time, and Hwitaek hurriedly swirled his coffee again. He had to get used to this, right now: this Jinho with his dark sunglasses, his loose white T-shirt with a bit of a low cut, and jeans that were a little ragged but in an artsy way. This Jinho looked like he’d been places, like he’d  _ found his way. _

Hwitaek missed the boy on the floor of his college dorm. He missed whispering in the dark about wanting to do more, be better, fly higher. 

But he couldn’t say it. He grabbed the regret that threatened to climb down his throat and pushed it back into the recesses of his mind. Now wasn’t the time. 

“Sorry—just. It’s been…” He shrugged a little helplessly, trying to smile. “It’s been a time.”

“It has, hasn’t it?” Jinho laughed. “How long has it been? 10 years, possibly? Damn, maybe even eleven. I’m getting old.” He took a sip of his own drink—it looked to be a black coffee, maybe, or at least something dark. Hwitaek’s heart ached at how he couldn’t remember if that was what he had always ordered.

“You’re only a year older than me.”

“Ah, so  _ we’re _ getting old then. I was going to spare you the pain.”

“Mm,” said Hwitaek softly. He finally lifted his coffee, still with the spoon in it, and took a swig. It was cold, and had probably been for a while. He wondered if he could warm it with the sun on his cheeks. 

“So, what is it?”

“Huh?”

Jinho cocked his head, watching him. Hwitaek suddenly remembered that his friend was crazy good at reading people. Or at least, he was great at reading  _ him _ . They had been friends for so long that for a while, when they were in college, they could communicate without saying a word. 

_ I’m tired _ , Hwitaek would say with rolling eyes across a lecture hall. 

_ Stay put, you imbecile,  _ Jinho would glare at him from his spot in the very back row.  _ You’re here for your major; I’m here because I can’t graduate without a tech course.  _

_ Touché.  _

“You need to talk about something,” said Jinho, pulling Hwitaek back to the present. “That’s why you invited me here, isn’t it?”

Hwitaek frowned. “I can’t just ask you to hang out because I haven’t seen you in forever?”

“You could, but then I’d have to ask who replaced you with an imposter.” Jinho grinned. “Just because we haven’t talked in ages doesn’t mean I don’t remember how you work, Hwitaek. You’ll grind yourself to dust in silence and say everything’s okay until it isn’t.”

“Thanks, I think?”

Jinho’s smile faltered. “It wasn’t a compliment. You know, you can come to me when you don’t have problems. Or at least, when you don’t think that you have problems. Then maybe they’ll come out before you even know about them.”

“I asked to meet up with my friend, not a therapist.”

“Oh, but I majored in music therapy, remember? And I was  _ very good at it _ .” 

“So I see you’re as arrogant as you ever were.”

“The pleasure is all mine.” Jinho hummed a bit, a pleasant tune that fit the bright atmosphere of the morning outside, and then took another sip of his drink. “So, I take it work hasn’t been great?”

“Work is fine.”

“I’m glad.”

Hwitaek stared at his half-empty mug of cold coffee, very aware of Jinho’s eyes on him. In his head, the Jinho he remembered from high school was telling him about his terrible summer job working retail at the department store next to the theater. 

_ Don’t worry _ , 17-year-old Jinho laughed with crinkles around his eyes, backpack slung over his shoulders,  _ if I could survive hours of getting yelled at by old women who can’t tell the difference between a new and used carpet, you can handle your 9 to 5 at the office.  _

30-year-old Jinho, though, just smiled sadly at Hwitaek. 

“It’s not fine, is it?”

“It’s not.” Hwitaek hated the words the instant they were out of his mouth. He often joked that he was a child trapped in an adult body, but now he felt the idea pierce him like a well-aimed arrow to the heart. Jinho had grown up. Why couldn’t he?! 

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Hwitaek muttered. There really wasn’t. He was paid enough to afford his fancy apartment on the third floor of a building that could be seen glittering in all its majesty from the café. He went to work every day and did something that he was good at, and then he came home and rested for hours where he didn’t need to think about work. He was getting better at cooking, and sometimes he even had time to write for fun. 

So why did he feel like it wasn’t enough?

Wasn’t it?

Jinho’s smile was still present, though now it felt a little mocking. “You know lots of people question their careers around our age.”

“Is that something you learned as a music therapist?” Hwitaek snapped bitingly, unable to help himself. 

“What makes you think I’m a music therapist?” 

Hwitaek’s thoughts, which had been whizzing around his head as if through a pinball machine, suddenly stilled. “What?”

“I’m not a music therapist.”

“But that’s—”

“What I studied in college, I know.” Jinho’s shrug was nonchalant, though now it was Hwitaek’s turn to see a slight uncertainty in the droop of his shoulders. “It wasn’t for me. I dabbled a little, took all the right tests, tried it for a bit...I’m not cut out for it. Mentors said I was too blunt. I started to feel like I was...I don’t know. Like people were taking parts of me with them when they left. I started to take responsibility for their decisions, and I knew when that started happening that I couldn’t do it anymore.”

“So...now…”

“I still play, kinda. Guitar in a band on the weekends. I have a gig later today. Tuesdays I tutor the kids down the street.” A smile flitted over his face as if it wasn’t quite his. “I don’t think they like me very much. Won’t stop talking about a ‘Mr. Kang’ that they see on Wednesdays. I don’t really blame them, honestly.”

“Oh,” Hwitaek said. He didn’t know what else he  _ could _ say. His next words came out even smaller. “I’m sorry.”

“As you said, there’s nothing to be sorry about.” Jinho downed the rest of his cup and set it on the table with a clink. He eyed the bottom of it as if it had wronged him somehow, and Hwitaek finally summoned the courage he’d been fighting to gather for a bit. 

“I just feel like there’s more to this, you know. It’s not like I hate my job. Work is fine; it’s even good! I like my coworkers and we get lunch together sometimes, just down the street at that Korean barbecue place. It’s pretty good. But...I just thought…” His shoulders slumped. “Life was easier when you could just find friends on the playground, and people got along because they made damn good partners at handball.” 

“You remember that?”

“How could I forget?” Fondness crept into Hwitaek’s voice as he too finished his coffee. “We were the best duo there was. None of the other third graders would come near us.”

“Damn straight.” 

A pause washed over them, but the regret was no longer there. It felt nice. Hwitaek wondered if he should order another coffee just to make it last, even if the caffeine left his hands shaking. The squeak of Jinho’s chair across the floor made that decision for him, though, and before he knew it, they were both standing. 

“Where you headed after this?” Jinho asked. 

“Home,” Hwitaek admitted with some embarrassment. “I’ve got no other plans today, just this.” He normally didn’t have the energy for it. Just recovering from working took up pretty much the whole weekend. Today, though, the sun dappled warm bursts down his side, making it hard not to smile. 

“That’s a shame,” Jinho said. “I could use some company at rehearsal. The other guys are coming in right before the show, so it’s just going to be me for at least an hour. We could catch up some more.”

Hwitaek blinked. “You want me to come?”

“Sure. You know, since you said you’ve got no plans. And because we’re friends, of course.” 

_ Friends.  _

Some part of Hwitaek shattered then, so hard and loud that he worried Jinho might have heard it. This two-decade friendship of his had been something of a treasure to him, and the overworked part of his heart had been worried that time had made him lose it. His demons had whispered that because Jinho and he had always been on different paths, they were destined to lose touch. To become strangers. 

To be fair, Hwitaek wasn’t really sure who this new Jo Jinho was, either. He wasn’t the Jinho who had been his right-hand man on the handball court, nor was he the one who’d laughed off his shitty summer job, nor was he the young man who had drunk a whole bottle of wine with him on a dirty dorm carpet. They were almost strangers as it was.

Except one thing. Except—this Jo Jinho wanted Hwitaek’s company. He was his friend,  _ of course _ . As if it wasn’t a question. Jo Jinho was his friend, regardless of who they were now, or what they’d lost. 

“I’ll go,” Hwitaek found himself saying as if it were the easiest thing in the world. The ground felt slightly less tilted under his feet than it had when he’d walked in; at least he had this. “Where should I meet you?” 


End file.
